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Plombiere, Germaine
Prepare a pint (only) of vanilla ice cream. Cut in small square pieces six slices candied pineapples, place them in a bowl with just enough lukewarm water to cover them for ten minutes, drain out the water, then pour in two tablespoons rum, a tablespoon maraschino and one tablespoon Swiss kirsch, mix well and let infuse for twenty minutes, then add them to the vanilla cream with a teaspoon kummel and mix well with spatula. Beat up two gills thick cream to a stiff froth, add one tablespoon fine sugar, mix well, then add the vanilla and thoroughly mix. Line the interior of a dome-shaped quart mould with a thin sheet of white paper, drop in the ice cream, etc., cover the preparation with a sheet of paper, place the cover on, bury it in the ice-cream tub for one hour, remove, wipe the mould all around, unmould on a cold dish with a folded napkin, lift up the paper and serve.
A bombe-style moulded ice cream: softened vanilla ice cream folded with liqueur-soaked candied pineapple and whipped cream, then set in a dome mould. The one thing to watch is the alcohol — nearly a quarter cup of spirits in a quart of ice cream depresses the freezing point sharply, so the mixture must go into the mould cold and stay very cold.
- GillsTwo gills of thick cream is one cup; "thick cream" here means heavy or double cream, 36% fat or better. Whipped with a tablespoon of sugar it should hold a soft peak, not a dry one, or it will not fold smoothly into the ice cream.
- "The vanilla cream"The recipe uses this to mean the pint of vanilla ice cream, not a custard. Let it soften at room temperature until it is spreadable but not melted, fold in the fruit and kümmel, then fold that into the whipped cream.
- The ice-cream tubThe original mould is buried in a wooden tub packed with cracked ice and rock salt, which can run below 0F and sets the dome in an hour. A domestic freezer at 0F may not manage it in an hour; allow four hours or more, and expect a softer set because of the spirits.
- Kümmel, maraschino, kirschKümmel is a caraway-flavoured grain liqueur, still made but uncommon; the teaspoon is a background note rather than a flavour you should taste. Maraschino here is the marasca cherry liqueur of the Adriatic, now made in Italy — not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Swiss kirsch is a clear, unsweetened cherry eau-de-vie, not a sweet cherry-brandy liqueur.
- Soaking the pineappleThe lukewarm water rinse softens the candied fruit and takes off surplus sugar syrup so it will absorb the liqueurs. Drain it well — carried-over water freezes into hard crystals in the finished bombe.
- Lining the mouldPlain paper was used so the dome would release cleanly. Plastic wrap or a strip of parchment works better; press it flush against the metal, since creases print onto the surface of the ice cream.
- UnmouldingWipe the mould, then dip it briefly in cold water or wrap it in a cloth wrung out in cold water for a few seconds. Turn out onto a chilled plate and return to the freezer to firm up if it has begun to slump.
- YieldAbout a quart, serving six to eight in small portions. It is rich and heavily spirited; more than that per person is too much.
Plombières is one of the classic moulded ice creams of the nineteenth-century French repertoire — traditionally an almond-flavoured custard base bound with candied fruit and kirsch, frozen in a mould and turned out whole. The name is usually traced either to the spa town of Plombières-les-Bains in the Vosges or to plomb, lead, for the lead-lined moulds such desserts were set in; neither account is firmly documented. Nineteenth-century restaurant cooking gave moulded ices personal names as a matter of course, and "Germaine" here is presumably the house designation for this particular combination, the way an escalope might be labelled for a patron or a singer. The instruction to bury the mould in the ice-cream tub places the recipe before mechanical refrigeration was general in kitchens: the ice cream itself was churned in a salted-ice freezer, and the finished bombe was ripened in the same tub of ice and rock salt.